Final Secret of the Illuminati

by Robert Anton Wilson

  According to LaBarre’s Ghost Dance, the shamans of North and South America used over 2,000 different metaprogramming chemicals; those of Europe and Asia, curiously, only used about 250.73 Amanita muscaria (the “fly agaric” mushroom) was the most widely used sacred drug in the Old World, and the peyote cactus in the New. Over the past 30-to-40,000 years countless shamans have been trained by older shamans (as anthropologist Carlos Castaneda is trained by brujo — witch-man — Don Juan Matus in the famous books) to use these chemicals, as Dr. Leary and Dr. Lilly have used them, to metaprogram the nervous system and bring in some of the signals usually not scanned. (On the visual spectrum alone, it has been well known since Newton that we normally perceive less than 0.5 (one-half of one) per cent of all known pulsations.) It can safely be generalized that the link between such sensitive new scannings and personal belief in Higher Intelligences is the most probable explanation of the origins of religion.

  That the turned-on mind is cosmic in dimension is stated directly by Carlos Castaneda’s shamanic teacher, Don Juan Matus, in Tales of Power:

  “Last night was the first time you flew on the wings of your perception. A sorcerer can use those wings to touch other sensibilities, a crow’s for instance, a coyote’s, a cricket’s, or the order of other worlds in that infinite space.” (Italics added.)

  When Professor Castaneda asked directly, “Do you mean other planets, Don Juan?” the old shaman answered without reservation: “Certainly.”74

  As Captain James T. Kirk once remarked, “Can all this just be an accident? Or could there be some alien intelligence behind it?”

  The horrors begin

  At this point in our adventure, I was entering my second year on Welfare and approaching my 42nd birthday. Illuminatus was still not published. Sometimes when I looked into the mirror I could imagine the words FAILURE: TOTAL, ABJECT, COMPLETE FAILURE written on my forehead. I fully appreciated Mae West’s famous verdict: “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor, and rich is better.”

  I was doing Sufi heart-chakra exercises every day, to open myself more and more to love for all beings. It was not that I really wanted, or hoped, to become a saint, but merely that, without such self-work, I could easily crumble into the bundle of paranoia and self-pity that many a 1960s idealist had become during the Nixon Counter-Revolution. The heart chakra opened, at times, and light poured out, just like it says in the textbooks, and the Mystic loved every living creature. The whole world was my body. It was gorgeous. Two days later, despite continued work on heart-opening, money worries would overcome the Poor Fool again and I would feel the onset of the classic Anxiety Syndrome — dizziness, wet palms, rapid heartbeat, the whole works.

  According to William F. Buckley, Jr., and various other philosophers who have never been poor, this kind of thing is supposed to build character and keep America strong. The Poor Fool saw a lot of other people on Welfare in those months — if you live in a poor neighborhood, you meet poor people — and I made a detailed study of the kind of character this experience builds. In my judgment, they would all have been less paranoid if, instead of being poor seven days a week, they were allowed to be comfortable six days and were subjected to the Chinese Water Torture on the seventh.

  The Poor Fool continued his Sufi heart-chakra exercises, concentrating on loving people like Buckley, Nixon and Rockefeller. Meanwhile, he attacked his anxiety symptoms with pranayama, a yogic breathing method which Crowley (among others) promises will banish any negative emotion. After a month of doing pranayama for 30 minutes every morning, the anxiety symptoms went away. The heart chakra also became more active and I started falling in love with everybody I met.

  Then Kerry Thornley, high priest of Eris, re-entered my life, dragging the Kennedy Assassination horrors with him.

  As a result of Thornley’s feud with D.A. Jim Garrison in 1967-68, Thornley had entered a belief system in which Garrison was, like Joe McCarthy, an unscrupulous power-seeker willing to defame any number of innocents in order to make headlines and advance his own political career. By the time Garrison’s conspiracy theories had collapsed in court (he never convicted a single “conspirator”), everybody, even Garrison’s most devout followers in the underground press, was more or less willing to accept that belief and forget all about Garrison’s bizarre investigations.

  By 1973, Thornley had begun to enter a different belief-system. He was puzzled over many aspects of the case Garrison had tried to manufacture against him, and kept brooding over the details. Basically, the case rested upon what ordinary people call coincidences. Jungians and parapsychologists call them synchronicities. Garrison called them “propinquities” and said they proved the existence of “a conspiracy so vast as to stagger the imagination.”

  Thornley began to believe in the conspiracy. The coincidences-synchronicities-propinquities hadn’t “just happened”; they had been manipulated and therefore Thornley had been set up, like Oswald, as a fall guy to drive independent investigators (like Garrison) off the real scent.

  According to Garrison, these propinquities indicated that Thornley had been part of a conspiracy that managed the assassination and framed Oswald. Thornley, for years, was convinced that it was all coincidence — but then he began to wonder. He and Oswald had both come to the attention of their superiors in the Marines because they were avowed Marxists at that time and were labeled “trouble-makers.” Could Naval Intelligence have noted their physical resemblance and started concocting a plot to exploit this resemblance later?

  The more Thornley thought about this, the more alarming the propinquities (or coincidences) seemed. At one point, he went to a hypnotist to attempt to discover if Naval Intelligence could have brainwashed him, erased the memory of that, and controlled him for years . . . could he have been part of the plot without knowing it? Naturally, the hypnotist was unable to find a definite yes or no answer to this question.

  Then, early in 1975, Thornley remembered an odd conversation in 1963 with a New Orleans man whom we will call Mr. M. The subject was — are you ready? — how to assassinate a President and get away with it. It was all abstract and theoretical (both Thornley and Mr. M. were aspiring writers, and the idea was to construct a plot that would convince the reader it could work in real life), but at one point Mr. M. said that the best technique would be to use individuals who didn’t even know they were being used.

  Thornley later heard rumors that Mr. M. was actually a lower-level member of the New Orleans Mafia.

  At the time Thornley remembered this, the latest idea among professional Kennedy Assassination buffs was that the Mafia had collaborated with the C.I.A. on the job.

  Had the assassination actually been a Mafia-Naval Intelligence job, and had Mr. M., in that odd conversation, been testing Thornley to see if any memory of the hypothetical brainwashing lingered near the surface of consciousness?

  About that time one of the Assassination Investigation organizations put out a paper suggesting multiple Oswalds — an elaboration on the “two Oswalds” suggested by Professors Popkin (The Second Oswald) and Thompson (Six Seconds in Dallas). According to this model, Oswald either died or was murdered shortly after leaving the Marines, and his I.D. had then been used by Naval Intelligence as a cover for a variety of agents who more or less looked like him.

  And some very intelligent, academic and non-paranoid conspiracy researchers began to point out an interesting pattern surrounding the Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. assassinations: a series of false trails which were never followed up by the official investigations but which later served to befuddle and confuse the numerous citizens’ investigations (including Garrison’s). Some of these false trails, it was alleged, led to Fidel Castro. All of these red herrings had been dragged across the trail, according to this school, as fail-safes, in case the original “deranged lone assassin” scenario fell apart.75 Thornley began to wonder how much of his life in and after the Marine Corps had been manipulated as part of such a red herring.

  Then Tho
rnley read about the case of Robert Byron Watson.

  Watson, a convict, has charged that he overheard a plot to kill Martin Luther King Jr. in a shop in Atlanta in 1968.

  One of the conspirators described by Watson seems to match Thornley’s memories of Mr. M.

  Watson’s story has been investigated and pronounced worthless by the F.B.I. Naturally.

  It has also been investigated and pronounced true by black activist, comedian and conspiracy buff Dick Gregory. Naturally.

  You can predict, with about 99% accuracy, whether a given individual will believe Watson’s story, irrespective of the evidence, or lack of evidence — just on the basis of that individual’s political orientation. (Whatever you believe imprisons you.) The one percent whose reaction to Watson’s charges cannot be predicted from their previous politics — the one individual in a hundred who would like to know what the hell is really going on — are the only persons on Earth not included in Gurdjieff’s dismal declaration that this is a planet of conditioned robots.

  Thornley, you will remember, is one of the inventors of the theology of Discordianism, which is expounded at some length in Illuminatus; and Volume I of the trilogy is dedicated to him (and to Mr. Gregory Hill, another great Discordian theologian). This dedication, it now appears, is unfortunate, because Mr. Thornley, believing he has solved the John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. assassinations, is somewhat worried that his attempts to reveal the truth will be mistaken for a publicity gimmick to promote Illuminatus.

  Any public statement by Shea and myself that Thornley’s charges are not a publicity gimmick for our book will, of course, only increase suspicions about that possibility.

  I must point out that two weeks after Thornley first made his charges against Mr. M. (to the Atlanta police) he was robbed, pistol-whipped and had his I.D. taken.

  That coincidence (or propinquity) is not funny at all.

  Ishtar’s Walk: a guided tour of Hell

  All conspiracy buffs are persecuted eventually. This is a sociological law on which I would stake my life, because I have seen it confirmed in every conspiracy-seeking group I’ve ever known. Perhaps the persecution is created by the conspiracy-seekers themselves (in the sense that every neurotic creates his own problems), or perhaps the mad satire in Illuminatus is true after all and every conspiracy ever imagined actually exists. The fact remains that those who believe the world is run by the Jesuits get persecuted as much as those who believe it is run by the Elders of Zion; and those who believe it is run by the Rockefellers get persecuted in exactly equal measure. People who believe the Air Force is deliberately hiding the facts about the UFOs get persecuted by a special group of sinister beings known as the Men in Black, who claim to be Air Force officers — but who are (naturally) denied by the Air Force. There almost seems to be a neurotic-psionic law: whatever you fear most will eventually come after you.

  The shaman, of course, lives through this process on more levels than the ordinary paranoid, because the shaman is determined to confront every terror and conquer it. Many, however, are shamans without knowing it, and invoke their private demons in total ignorance, thinking it is all coming from outside themselves.

  The following is transcription of a letter distributed to the underground press and various conspiracy investigators by Kerry Thornley after he was beaten and had his I.D. taken.

  Dear Sir,

  On August 9th, 1975, twelve days after I delivered a statement to the Atlanta Police supporting allegations made by Robert Byron Watson concerning the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, two armed men wearing ski masks entered the home of my ex-mate during a party at which I was one of the guests. These masked individuals stole, among other things, all my identification.

  This incident was reported to the Atlanta Police who later captured four men who they claim are the 'ski mask bandits.’

  I had no particular reason - - except for my general knowledge of how the JFK assassins have operated in the past (regarding the impersonation-incrimination of Oswald, for example) - - for concluding that anyone had sent these bandits expressly to steal my ID. Nevertheless I did mention to a couple of friends that I was somewhat concerned that my ID - - regardless of why it was stolen in the first place - - might end up in the hands of the Mafia, the CIA, of the Naval Intelligence Command (all three of which groups seem to have been involved in the JFK murder).

  Yesterday I was finally able to read - - no thanks to the Atlanta Police - - Robert Byron Watson's entire statement concerning how he overheard some heroin dealers associated with the syndicate plotting the MLK murder and how, at a later date, he was framed by syndicate and DEA people who sent heroin to his home through the mail, and then busted him, in order to discredit any future testimony he might deliver relative to the King murder.

  Watson's statement contains this sentence: 'Just before the heroin was sent to my home through the mail, four armed, ski masked men broke down the back door one night about 9.00 p.m. while my mother and I were watching the T.V.' These four armed men then robbed Watson and his mother using exactly the same heavy-handed tactics and threats - - such as that they were 'going to blow your goddamn brains out' - - as did the ski masked men who robbed us. Watson says he was told that his assailants were 'hit men' from the syndicate.

  Watson's mother was knocked down; I was pistol whipped, once, under the left eye.

  In another part of his statement, Watson mentions that someone was arrested in New Orleans who was using his name and his social security number at a time when he could prove conclusively that he was not in New Orleans.

  So I have decided it would be a good idea to warn everyone that there may indeed now be a 'Second Thornley' wandering around. Effective as of the 9th of August I have no ID and anyone who shows up anywhere with my identification (operator’s license, student card, social security and library cards, etc.) is an impersonator. I shall not replace my ID as, under such unusual circumstances as these, that will only complicate matters.

  Henceforth, my identification shall be my right thumb print.

  Kerry Wendell Thornley

  6 September 1975

  Box 827

  Atlanta

  GA 30301

  Thornley began writing to me regularly about his solution to the assassinations, and insisted more and more often that his life was in danger. I tried to calm him down a bit by reminding him of the difference between theory and proof. It soon became evident, from his subsequent letters, that he was now half-convinced that I was part of the assassination conspiracy team.

  I have a bad leg, from my polio in childhood, and it now began acting up worse than ever. Sometimes, I could not walk without a cane. Other times, pains and spasms kept me from writing in the day and from sleeping at night. “This is psychosomatic,” I told myself. I quoted a Sufi proverb, “We do not walk on our legs but on our Will.” The leg perversely got worse. I tried yoga, chiropractics, ordinary M.D.s, faith healers, polarity therapy, acupuncture and staying spaced out on pot for days. The leg got worse.

  Dell, which had announced publication of Illuminatus, changed their minds and said they wouldn’t print it unless we cut 500 pages.

  I thought in anguish that we were ruining a masterpiece (such is the artistic ego), but we cut the 500 pages. I would rather have a flawed Illuminatus in print in 1975, I said, than no Illuminatus in print.

  Thornley’s letters to me became increasingly denunciatory. He now believed that the Discordian Society had been infiltrated very early by C.I.A. agents (probably including me) who had used it as a cover for an assassination bureau. The logic of this was brilliant in a surrealistic, Kafkaesque sort of way. Try to picture a jury keeping a straight face when examining a conspiracy that worshipped the Goddess of Confusion, honored Emperor Norton as a saint, had a Holy Book called “How I Found Goddess and What I Did to Her After I Found Her,” and featured personnel who called themselves Malaclypse the Younger, Ho Chih Zen, Mordecai the Foul, Lady L, F.A.B.*, Fa
ng the Unwashed, Harold Lord Randomfactor, Onrak the Backwards, et al. . . .

  ~•~

  * The initials refer to Lady L’s title, “Fucking Anarchist Bitch,” originally given to her by Eldridge Cleaver. “That’s me,” she said happily.

  ~•~

  While the Suspect was receiving these letters and trying to persuade Thornley, gently, that his imagination was growing faster than his evidence, various forms of paranoia were breaking out in the local Leary-Starseed group. Every week somebody would come to the Suspect and warn, in urgent whispers, that somebody else in the group was actually a government agent. Often, the person accused one week would be the person coming around to accuse somebody else the next week.

  Of course, there must have been at least one real government agent in the group, since it is now established that every piece of mail Leary wrote or received in prison was Xeroxed by the California prison system, the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and the D.E.A. (What did they think, jointly or severally, about Joshua Norton and the Goddess Eris, not to mention extraterrestrials and immortality?)

  Around about then Dennis Martino managed to die of murder, suicide and natural causes, all at the same time, in Spain. That is to say, Martino’s death was reported by the press first as murder, then as suicide and finally as the result of an accidental overdose of heroin. Martino had been a government agent assigned to infiltrate the Leary defense organization as a spy — a procedure the Supreme Court has found objectionable in other cases. Martino, it is claimed by some persons close to the scene, also spied on the government for the Leary defense group. According to Leary, at least two more of his defense staff at the time were also government agents, but these were simultaneously co-conspirators with various paramilitary left-wing terrorist organizations.